Officials: Warnings could have saved lives
Asian officials conceded today that they failed to issue broad public warnings immediately after a massive undersea earthquake in Indonesia, which could have saved countless lives from the subsequent giant waves that smashed into nine countries.
But governments insisted they did not know the true nature of the threat because there was no international system in place to track tidal waves in the Indian Ocean – an area where they are rare – and they can’t afford to buy sophisticated equipment to build one.
What warnings there were came too little, too late.
The magnitude 9.0 earthquake – the largest in 40 years – shifted huge geological plates beneath the sea north-west of Sumatra island, causing a massive and sudden displacement of millions on tons of water.
Indonesian villages closest to the quake’s epicentre were swamped within minutes, but elsewhere the waves radiated outwards, gathering speed and ferocity until they made landfall.
Waves began pummelling southern Thailand about one hour after the earthquake. After two and a half hours, the torrents had travelled some 1,000 miles and slammed India and Sri Lanka.
Malaysia, the Maldives, Burma, and Bangladesh were also hit. Eventually they struck Somalia, 2,800 miles away on the east coast of Africa.
Indonesian officials said they had no way to know that the earthquake had caused the earthquake-driven waves, or tsunamis, or how dangerous they might have been.
“Unfortunately, we have no equipment here that can warn about tsunamis,” said Budi Waluyo, an official with Indonesia’s Meteorology and Geophysics Agency. “The instruments are very expensive and we don’t have money to buy them.”
But Thammasarote Smith, a former senior forecaster at Thailand’s Meteorological Department, said governments could have done much more to warn people about the danger.
“The department had up to an hour to announce the emergency message and evacuate people but they failed to do so,” Thammasarote was quoted as saying in The Bangkok Post newspaper.
“It is true that an earthquake is unpredictable but a tsunami, which occurs after an earthquake, is predictable.”
Kathawudhi Marlairojanasiri, the department’s chief weather forecaster, said it had sent out warnings through radio and television from 9am on Sunday about a possible undertow along the south-west coast of Thailand, where tens of thousands of foreign tourists were on holiday.
But the warnings came after the first waves hit. A website warning went up three hours later – but by then, at least 700 people had died in Thailand.
Sulamee Prachuab, department’s Seismological Bureau, said the department could not give a real-time warning because it did not have the satellite technology to do it.
India’s Information Minister, Dayanidhi Maran, said his country would consider establishing an warning system. Australia and Japan said they lend their expertise to help build it.
An Australian official said at least a year would be needed to set one up. The exact cost of setting up such a system wasn’t clear, but it would likely be many millions of pounds.
Scientists said seismic networks in the region recorded the quake, but without wave sensors in oceans that would have tracked the path of the waves, there was just no way to determine the direction a tsunami would travel.
“If they had tidal gauges and a tsunami warning system, many people who died would have been saved,” said Waverly Person, director of the US Geological Survey national earthquake information service in Golden, Colorado.
“They could have tracked the waves,” he said. “They won’t tell you how high the waves will be, but they can tell you when they will hit. Local authorities can warn citizens to get off the coast.”
Such a system presumes, however, an organised communication system and widely understood procedures and discipline by hotel operators, fishing villages, and local authorities to clear the coastline quickly in case of a coming disaster.
Most of developing Asia lacks such infrastructure, and casualties were by far highest in three highly impoverished areas – the coasts of eastern Sri Lanka and south-eastern India, and the northern tip of Indonesia’s Sumatra island.
An international warning system in the Pacific was started in 1965, the year after tsunamis associated with a magnitude 9.2 quake struck Alaska in 1964. It is administered by the US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
Member states include all the major Pacific rim nations in North America, Asia and South America, as well as the Pacific islands, Australia and New Zealand.
In Japan, a network of fibre-optic sensors record any seismic activity and passes the information to a powerful computer at the Meteorological Agency, which estimates of the height, speed and arrival time of any tsunamis and the coastal areas most at risk.
Within two minutes of the quake, the agency can sound the alarm.
